


Borrowed

by replicasex



Series: Hat AUs [3]
Category: The Road - Cormac McCarthy, The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Dark, Drabble, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-06 20:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13419066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/replicasex/pseuds/replicasex
Summary: "They were 30 days traveling away from the ruins of a dying city. The streets they traveled were strewn with ash and the bodies of the fallen trailed them like wild flowers sown haphazardly behind them."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> He walked out into the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of an intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
> 
> -The Road

They were 30 days traveling away from the ruins of a dying city. The streets they traveled were strewn with ash and the bodies of the fallen trailed them like wild flowers sown haphazardly behind them.  
  
Silence their companion all those long days, grateful to appear at last outside the dying embers of a city gone mad with chanting, the whole of the place gibbered and moaned.   
  
Their clothes, their shoes, every possession accumulated is ragged and stinking.  They move and halt and move again dictated only by the survival of the other two. Each the others' world entire.  
  
We need to stop, Ross said. The tops of blackened trees whispered and groaned before him.  The other two paused to consider.  
  
It won't be safe this close to the road, Smith said. We'll be seen.  
  
We haven't seen a soul in weeks, Smith, Trott said.  
  
That doesn't mean they're not there, Smith said darkly. Remember Bristol?  
  
We all remember, Ross said. But we won't make it through the next pass if we don't rest.  
  
Smith looked blankly out at the road before him. In all the land his eyes could reach no brighter color than the dull grey monotone of ash could be seen.  
  
There's a hill a little ways inside the treeline. We'll set camp behind it, away from the road, Smith said. He stumbled forward towards the blackened trees and the others followed.  
  
-  
  
The hunger that followed them outside the city clawed and screamed in their guts. The meager portions they rationed for themselves kept them alive only on the absolute cusp of starving agony. None of them expected to escape that pain again in their lives.  
  
They lay on the ground under a plastic sheet and stinking blankets. Each could feel the other's heat and when the bad wind blew the shivering went through their bodies like electricity.  
  
It was not yet winter and the nights had already become unbearable.  
  
Smith stared at the broken cloudy sky. He could see where the moon hung in the sky above the Earth filtered by the grey grit of clouds.  
  
The wind shook the hollow limbs of trees and the smell of decay wafted down to him. Senseless, Smith thought. Oh God.  
  
-  
  
It had been sensible at first, when it started. They had all decided it was for the best. The office was sturdier than any of their flats and they had moved wholesale into the building with the others they counted as friends. It had felt right, safe somehow in a world that had given up on the concept.  
  
Even then they knew not to burden themselves with anything non-essential. Food, clothes, tools. The people they loved.

 

It wouldn't last.  
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

When they woke the world was more grey and ashen than the day before and each day marked the beginning of some new ache or pain. The wind shook and groaned.

Up, Smith said to the other two. Get up.

Jesus Smith, it’s still dark out, Trott said staring at the sky. No stars were out, only smears of grey like bruises on the sky. Ross was still snoring beside him.

Sooner we leave the safer I’ll feel, Smith said.

Nothing lived in the woods save them and their passing as unremarkable as the dying blades of grass littering the ground. All blue grey and covered in ashes and dust. A hollowed out scabland cold and dark and empty.

They gathered their meager supplies and consulted the yellowing folds of an ancient map laid out in front of them like some sacred text, numbered and holy with the hopes and fears and dreams of the dead.

South, right? Ross asked. He was cold and wheezed and stared at Smith’s shoulder without meeting his eyes at all. Sundered and stolen the life and laughter between them. They had each seen in themselves the utmost peril of their own survival. Death a temptation sweeter than the stolen moments of their echoing past, a word in the ear and warm hands tickling their neckline, hands steady on their shoulders.

They had been taken, once. Never again. Whatever it took, Smith thought. He remembered the taste of blood in his mouth, the shiny grey sheath of a man's exposed vertebrae.

Yes, Smith said and ran his fingers through his twisted beard. Yes.

 

-Before

 

In each and every last survivor of the broken and dying Earth the atavistic urges of their inheritance finally unleashed. They had not thought to murder until its grinning omen was cast at their feet like the desiccated skull of a patricide.

It had taken days outside of Bristol for the smell to dissipate. Smoke and fire and the end of things. They had left the chanting and gibbering days behind and now they could smell only the colder ashes of the countryside. In a world full of the frenetic energy of the dying the sudden absence of anything at all had made them feel safe.

A tent, bright colored to ward off the occasional hunter in a time when life hummed and thrived in every corner of the place. A fire bright and stinking with the feeding of dead limbs. Easy to find and with easy casual steps they were found and routed and set to running like ground-foxes before hounds.

They were dragged, gagged and bound hand-to-foot out towards a service road they had not bothered to scout. A pair of diesel trucks, even then a gob-smacking rarity, parked before them. They had not even heard the crank of the engines at night before the men had discovered them.

They were each bleeding but Smith had sliced into the filthy raw hide of his attacker. He had been beaten, his nose broken or nearly so, blood streaming down his face in great gouts staining his teeth and lips. There were six men at least and each shared the same haunted look as any man to be met along the road but in each a fire had roared until that sound had drowned the rest to ashes and death and the memory of heat.

Here, this cunt nicked me, the one who dragged Smith shouted out to his others.

Yeah? Asked one of the men by the trucks, thicker set than the rest and rust colored keys in his hands like a symbol of authority. He spat out onto the ground. And what if he did?

And what if it gets infected?

And what if it does?

At this the dragger had no reply save bafflement. I said what if – he tried again.

Can it, the driver said. Makes no difference to Himself on the hill.

The man dragging Smith quieted, cowed and miserable. They settled the three of them together in front of the trucks and the draggers collapsed to the ashen ground. The one who had dragged Ross was still looking at him still.

You think Himself will let me have one of them? He asked. The other men looked round incredulously.

They’re all for him, the last dragger said. You know that, you know –

I know, I know, but it was me who saw the fire wasn’t it? Me who smelled them out. The man spat on the ground and stared at Ross again. And look at this one, he’s too good to go to the butcher boys. I had a little look at him and he’s too –

The man with the keys stilled. You violated his property? He asked quiet and low. A hush like velvet fell down among the men.

Nosir, I just had a look. No testing him out. Just a look. The man quaked with exhaustion and fear.

The man with the keys at last looked him in the eye. You know what happens, he said, to those who can't keep his law. He spat again.

I know, I know – the dragger started.

Shut up, the man with the keys said. Drag this meat into the trucks. Himself will decide where they go.

Trott and Smith were lifted bodily into the first truck and Ross was lifted into the second. The truckbeds were shocked wet and stinking with the copper smell of blood. The engines of the trucks cranked and growled and they set to life like the dying moans of a wretched beast.

The trucks drove off East, towards doom.

 

 

 


End file.
